Lord Shaftesbury used to quote a Scotch proverb: “Be aye sticken’ in a tree.” He would add, “Some one will rest under the branches, if you don’t.” This is the right principle. “One man soweth and another reapeth,” but both shall share “in the joy of God’s harvest.”
God’s love hath in us wealth unheaped:
Only by giving it is reaped.
The body withers and the mind
If pent in by a selfish rind.
Give thought, give strength, give deeds, give pelf,
Give love, give tears, and give thyself.
Give, give, be always giving:
Who gives not is not living:
The more we give the more we live.
Plant your tree!
In one of the Psalms we are told that light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. There is nothing remarkable in the assurance of light and gladness for the faithful – that is the teaching of the whole Bible. The remarkable thing in the promise is the way the light and gladness are said to come. “Light is sown for the righteous.” The figure of sowing is striking – light coming in seeds, planted like wheat, to grow up for us out of the soil. Our blessings are sown for us and grown in fields and gardens, and we gather them as we reap the harvests or pluck lovely flowers.
This means that the good things of our lives do not come to us full grown, but as seeds. We know what seed is. It contains only in germ the plant, the tree, or the flower which is to be. In this way all earthly life begins. When God wants to give an oak to the forest, he does not send out a great tree; he plants an acorn. When he would have a harvest of golden wheat waving on the field, he does not work a miracle and have it spring up over night; he puts into the farmer’s hands a bushel of wheat grains to scatter in the furrows. The same law holds in the moral and spiritual life. “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard see, which a man took and sowed in his field; which … becometh a tree.” So a noble life begins in a little seed, a mere point of life. It is at first only a thought, a suggestion, a desire; then a decision, a holy purpose.
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